FAMILY PLANNING BEGINS AT 50. 11 ;' c . ., . ... . . " $0- $ .' <'. .... 'i"" . ., v.,. ' ..,. ,0. .. :. ;: ).. '" -- o "v '" 'i '" "' : f :' '" v $ FOR THE MA TIJRE INDIVIDUAL, family planning begins with thoughtful consIderation of a bequest or life income gift to Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Life income gifts provide income for life for one or two persons... a charitable income tax deduction... avoIdance of capital gains tax... and probable reduction of estate taxes. Support our vital work on behalf of family planning and reproouctive freedom across the U.S. and in 33 other countries. For your free booklet, mail this coupon or call our director of planned gifts at 1...212...261...4693. Thank you. r----------------------------------------------------, NAME 0172 ADDRESS CITI STATE ZIP Please clip and send to: Director of Planned Gifts, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019 5882 ---------------------------------------------------- rfJJ Planned Parenthood@ I Federation of America, Inc. A copy of our latest financIal report IS avaIlable from the New York Department of State, Office of ChantIes RegIstration, Albany, New York 12231, or from Planned Parenthood Federation of Amenca,Inc 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10019 Please wrIte PPFA for a descnptlOn of our program and activltles and/or a list of the orgamzatIons to whlCh PPFA has contrIbuted In the last year. @ 1992 PPFA. Inc.TIus ad was paId for wIth pnvate contributions 63 CASUAL ISSUES AND NON-ISSUES by Ian Frazier S UMMARY: In May, the American Prosperity Foundation, Inc., an office- based sam pIing organiza- tion, chose from a preselected group a smaller group, which it believed was un- usually significant. Then professionals took that subset and divided it even fur- ther. At issue was whether an issue was an issue or a non-issue. On certain is- sues/non-issues, disagreement was so small as to be statistically negligible. For example: ISSUE NON-ISSUE My taxes Your taxes So far, so good. Other i/non-i inquir- ies, while less clear-cut, nevertheless fell within an acceptable margin of certainty- I NON-I The Russian Suicide Regular chairs Death Chair where acceptable certaInty was taken to be a percentage greater than sixty-six, or slightly more than America's ninety- three million television households. So far, so good. However, what were researchers to do in cases like the fol- lowing? I (NON-I) NON-I (I) "She's the Sheriff" ''Turner & Hooch" If the first was designated an issue, al- though possibly not, in the judgment of many respondents, and the second was definitely not an issue except insofar as the first one was (albeit to a lesser de- gree), what then? The question seemed to lop the entire procedure off at the knees, and progress stalled. Enter Nils Garrickson, a twenty-five- year-old wunderkind trained in the emerging science of cybernetics. Unfortunately, he was fired, leaving us rIght back at square one. Then they brought in somebody else, Tom some- body. He also got fired. Then they brought in Marcie, who was more or less kicked upstairs from Accounting. What she did, first off, was to go through all the non-issues and take a whole new look Just at them. She found, to her sur- prise, that many did not strictly qualify as non-issues at all, but included a sprin- kling of pseudo-issues, sub-issues, sec- ondary issues, meta-issues, and dead is- sues, as well as one or two real serious issues that had somehow been misfiled. Now we were getting somewhere. Print- outs of the new, culled list of non-issues were issued to every department head. Marcie's managerial style was hands-on, direct, and at times confrontational. Part Welsh, part Greek, with a slight mus- tache and a big, strapping form, she got the most from her smaller male associ- ates. First o she established a standard of "i/non-i-ness," based on the follow- ing model: I NON-I Golf junkets Miniature-golf junkets Later quantifying the standard by means of a simple algebraic formula (in- cluded in work sheet), she received the Nobel Pnze. At the time, my department was working on an issue for whIch we had not yet found a corresponding non- Issue: NON-I ? I Sex in the workplace I had run through all the non-i tables without success, and Marcie was becom- ing impatient. One Easter I stayed over just to get some hours to myself on the computer. Monday morning rolled around and I hadn't had a chance to go home and shower. SuddeIÙY it hit me! I ran into Marcie's office She was water- ing her plants. She'd just arrived. Puzzled, she looked up as I scrawled on her blackboard: I NON-I Sex in the Sex in the workplace fireplace Marcie plugged the coördinates into her formula-and, sure enough, they checked out. We examined our figures agaIn and agaIn to make absolutely cer- taIn. Overjoyed, we reviewed my data